Morphsyntax

Unit1
Grammar
o Prescriptive and descriptive; mental, universal and particular; formal and functional
o Concepts of (Un)grammatically and (Un)acceptability
Unit 2
Morphology I
o Word and its structure, Morpheme, Morphs and Allomorphs
o Phonologically, lexically and grammatically conditioned allomorphs
o Free and bound morphs
o Roots, affixes, stems, bases /Inflectional and derivational affixes
Unit 3
Mophology II
o Inflectional and derivational morphology (Disctinghishing criteria)
o Morphological processes ininflection (stem modification, suppletion, lack of morphology changes)
o Class changing vs Class maintaining derivational affixes
o Compounding: Types, neoclassical compounds
Unit 4
Lexical categories
o Traditional analysis and its problems parts of speech
o Open and closed Word clases
o Morph-syntactic properties
o Problems, cases of analysis: Core vs pheriperal, Words difficult to classify, multiple class
membership
Unit 5
Semantic coherence, constituency tests
o Structure of the phrase: form, function and relations: heads complements and modifiers,
syntagmatic vs paradigmatic relations
o Endocentric and exocentric phrases
o The analysis of the phrases patterns

Unit 1
Linguistic: the scientific study and analysis of human language
Grammar: In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses,
phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this
field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and
pragmatics. Set of internalised rules
Competence and performance: Chomsky separates competence and performance; he describes
'competence' as an idealized capacity that is located as a psychological or mental property or function and
performance as the production of actual utterances. In short, competence involves knowing the
language and performance involves doing something with the language. The difficulty with this construct
is that it is very difficult to assess competence without assessing performance.
Descriptive grammar: the systematic study and description of a language. Descriptive grammar refers to
the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers. Descriptive rules are natural,
known intuitively, need not be taught
Prescriptive grammar: a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a
language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of that language. Prescriptive grammar refers to the
structure of a language as certain people think it should be used. Prescriptive rules are not natural, must be
taught/learned in school, often reflect value judgments
Both kinds of grammar are concerned with rules--but in different ways. Specialists in descriptive grammar
(called linguists) study the rules or patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences.
On the other hand, prescriptive grammarians (such as most editors and teachers) lay out rules about what
they believe to be the correct or incorrect use of language
Language is part innate (Universal Grammar) + part learned (Mental Grammar)
Nature + Nurture
Universal gramar: consists of a set of unconscious constraints that let us decide whether a sentence is
correctly formed. This mental grammar is not necessarily the same for all languages. But according to
Chomskyian theorists, the process by which, in any given language, certain sentences are perceived as
correct while others are not, is universal and independent of meaning.
Thus, we immediately perceive that the sentence Robert book reads the is not correct English, even
though we have a pretty good idea of what it means. Conversely, we recognize that a sentence such as
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. is grammatically correct English, even though it is nonsense.

Type of differences

Formal / traditional gramar

Functional gramar

Grammaticality
Aceptability
Primary concern

How is (should) this sentence be

How are the meanings of this text

structured?

realized

Sentences

Whole texts

Syntax

Semantics

is something we know, as a set of

Is something we do, as a resource for

rules for sentence construction

making meaning

Unit of analysis
Language level of concern
Language

Traditional Grammar: it is used to describe the grammar of Standard English by comparing it with
Latin. In this type, the students learns parts of speech (nouns, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, adjective,
articles, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and interjections).
Formal Grammar: it is used to describe the structure of individual sentences. This type sets language as
a set of rules which allow or disallow certain sentence structure.
Functional Grammar: it is used to describe language in actual use and so focus on texts and their
contexts. This type sets a language as a resource for making meaning.
A Word which is gramatically right but it is not appropiate in the context it is acceptability